Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

This week begins the celebration of National Law Enforcement Week. It is a time where literally thousands of law enforcement officers and their families from across the United States would descend upon Washington, DC to commemorate the lives of all of the law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty. The names of the officers who have died in the past year are inscribed on the Law Enforcement Memorial Wall and recognized during this week.

The eight officers who have died in the line of duty here St. John Parish are celebrated with a ceremony in their honor usually in front of the Percy Hebert Building with family and friends of law enforcement present. This year our ceremony will be different. We are planning a Facebook live ceremony with only eight officers present to hold the pictures of our fallen officers, our department Chaplin and myself. The plan is to go live on the SJSO FB page at noon on Wednesday May 13, so please plan to join us.

This year will also be different because it is the first time that we honor our fallen officers after the guilty verdict for the man that took the life of Jeremy Triche and Brandon Nielsen on August 16, 2012. The preparation for the trial took months. We actually started planning and preparing for the trial in November 2019. It was painful for the families and officers to relive that horrible time, but in the end, it took the jury less than 30 minutes to convict the shooter of first-degree murder. While the verdict gives us all a brief moment of satisfaction, it does little to replace the lives lost. And so COVID-19 or not, we will honor our fallen offices.

This job of protecting citizens never stops. The criminals who prey on citizens, try to take things that do not belong to them, or take things they did not earn doesn’t stop. I must commend the officers of SJSO who came to work every day after Brandon and Jeremy were killed and continued to work risking their personal safety. And now, eight years later, I continue to commend these officers for putting their own personal safety at risk in the battle against this invisible serial killer we battle today.

In addition, I also want to personally thank the doctors and nurses and all of those in the medical field who are doing their best to help those infected. Their front line battle is as vicious as ours during these difficult times.

Speaking of medical professionals, I am married to a physical therapist who is now excited to be returning to the job she loves after six weeks of quarantine. And on May 5, Tanyia and I will celebrate 30 years of marriage. We both have been blessed with everything we need.

My prayers now are that as a community, we will come together, and do what is necessary to overcome this global pandemic. We are all in this together and if one person, one household, one neighborhood or one town does not participate in the social distancing, cleaning and mask wearing rules, we will have a longer road back to whatever the new normal will be.

Stay safe St. John!

Mike Tregre is sheriff of St. John the Baptist Parish. Reach him at m.tregre@stjohnsheriff.org.